Doom 3: Patents and the GPL
April 13th, 2009 by CrusaderDoomworld e-mailed id Software’s John Carmack about a potential legal issue with the upcoming release of Doom 3′s source code under the GPL:
Doomworld:
I believe you’ve said publicly that you are planning a GPL release of the Doom 3 source code, but I remember around the time the game was launched you had Creative holding a patent on the shadows algorithm, and you assuaged them by including support for EAX. Is that still causing problems?
Carmack:
When we release the code (no date set), anyone that uses it would potentially be infringing. There are workarounds at a modest performance cost.
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:54 pm
How do you even begin to comment on this ridiculous nonsense. So Creative own an algorithm and they used this to “persuade” id into supporting EAX!
I’m going to make a prediction about what these patents are going to achieve: Existing powerful companies and their patent grabbing are going to make it impossible for new companies to develop competing products. Dodgy businessmen — you know the ones, they handily make billions on economic downturns and end up buying their competitors for a pound — will own everything, they’ll make garbage and nobody will be able to do anything about it.