• @humanspiral@lemmy.ca
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    754 minutes ago

    While every comment here seems to scream “end patents”, arm has less patent bs than other tech (rounded corners) meant to sue/prevent use. Arm works hard on developing and improving architecture and designs to offer licenses at a compelling price. Qualcomm paying as much as other licensees should be preferable to Qualcomm than bankruptcy.

  • @irotsoma@lemmy.world
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    464 hours ago

    Tech patents are ridiculous. Let’s end them or reduce them to 1-3 years with no renewal. Then all that’s left is the specific copyright to the technology, not lingering webs of patents that don’t make any sense anyway to anyone with detailed knowledge of the tech. All they’re good for is big companies using legal methods to stop innovation and competition. Tech moves too fast for long patents and is too complex for patent examiners or courts to understand what is really patentable. So it comes down to who has the most money for lawyers.

    • @finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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      72 hours ago

      Yeah, but another big issue is that big companies can afford to bribe or buy out the patent holders in the first place. Ideally, the patent holders would benefit the most from everyone making their tech, but instead they benefit the most from one company being the exclusive manufacturer and highest bidder.

      The act of an agreement asking a patent holder not to sell to other manufacturers in itself should be illegal.

      • @irotsoma@lemmy.world
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        72 hours ago

        Yeah, making patents nontransferable would solve that. Ultimately, getting rid of most would be good, but if we have to keep them, then they should be dissolved if a company fails or is bought out because obviously the patent itself wasn’t enough to make a product that was viable. So everyone should get the chance to use the patent. The whole purpose of a patent vs keeping tech proprietary until the product is released was to benefit society once the patent expires. Otherwise, it makes more sense for companies to keep inventions secret if they aren’t just stockpiling them like they do now.

    • @cordlesslamp@lemmy.today
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      164 hours ago

      Seeing things like “slide to unlock”, “rounded corners”, and “scroll bouncing” are all patentable is ridiculous.

  • @TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee
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    457 hours ago

    The amount of IP money grubbing in the IT industry is able to literally make millions out of sand, this is just more of it.

    • molave
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      2 hours ago

      Not necessarily “out of sand”. IP is basically putting a price tag on a person for them to say “Yes, I consent”. In other words, technofeudalism.

      • @GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
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        355 hours ago

        the fact that you know they fucked up but don’t know how they fixed it says it all.

        even if they did “fix” it, public opinion has been settled and nobody will trust them for awhile.

      • @Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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        75 hours ago

        Yeah, iirc, at first they tried to downplay the change, then they paused it, then they walked it back entirely. I think that last step happened relatively recently, even.

        But IMO the damage was done from just trying to alter the deal like that.

        And, for me personally, I (naively) thought that ARM was an open standard. I opposed the Nvidia purchase because I thought they would do their corporate bullshit to kill off competition or for greed and thought that it getting blocked meant it would be free of corporate bullshit. This action makes it clear that it’s already got some of that going on and ARM has been mentally re-filed to a spot beside x86 and its derivatives.

        Though now I’m wondering if that’s the whole point. Do some shitty corporate stuff so that the next time someone wants to buy them out, there isn’t as much opposition and the current owners and C-suite can cash out.

  • cum
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    7210 hours ago

    The free market is going very well here

      • @chakan2@lemmy.world
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        4410 hours ago

        This is textbook late stage free market ideals at work. This is how the free market always ends.

      • @Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        What’s government enforced about it? Is ARM the only allowed chip designer for cellphones?

        • Fushuan [he/him]
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          46 hours ago

          license enforcement is a thing because if someone bypasses it you can sue them, which is a government interaction. Technically, claiming X means nothing if there’s no one that enforces your claim.

          • @Maggoty@lemmy.world
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            12 hours ago

            Yes but that rule protects you the same as it does them. They can be a monopoly if nobody else can get their chips sold but they cannot be a government enforced monopoly unless nobody else is allowed to sell chips.

            • Fushuan [he/him]
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              114 minutes ago

              That’s your interpretation and that’s fine but I understand that they have a monopolies because their patent is broad enough to be hard to create alternatives, and the patent is government enforced. That’s how I understood it at least.

              In any case, I don’t really mind if you want to keep using your interpretation, I was just trying to rationalise what the other commenter said and explain what I though was their point of view to say what they said.

              Have a great day.

        • @lud@lemm.ee
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          68 hours ago

          Yeah, the huge companies would dominate over small companies even more than they already do.

          • @ConsistentParadox@lemmy.ml
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            97 hours ago

            Copyrights and patents are literally government enforced monopolies for huge companies. Without them, there would be a lot more competition.

            • @lud@lemm.ee
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              66 hours ago

              Really? Calling it a government enforced monopoly seems very disingenuous.

              Good luck trying to make a movie without Disney stealing it or making an invention with really effective solar panels or something without the biggest companies stealing it and bankrupt the original creator.

              Copyright and patents protect everyone involved in creation and while there are a LOT of problems with the systems. Removing it entirely seems like the biggest overcorrection possible.

              • @ConsistentParadox@lemmy.ml
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                34 hours ago

                Companies such as Disney have armies of lawyers to enforce their monopolies. Copyright and patent laws are designed exclusively for the rich.

                Disney can very well “steal” other people’s work and get away with it under this system. Without such laws, everyone else would be able to “steal” from Disney as well, which would level the playing field.

                • @lud@lemm.ee
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                  4 hours ago

                  The playing field won’t be level without patents or copyright. Why would I an average idiot make or invent something if the exact second I show the world my invention someone takes it and mass-produces it within a week? I have no chance to raise capital to make the invention myself if you can already buy it in every store. The Chinese manufacturing industry essentially does this already but to a lesser degree. Imagine if every company did that. No small companies or individuals would stand a chance against Goliath.

                  And again the word monopoly is very misleading in this discussion, especially when it comes to copyright. There is absolutely nothing stopping anyone from making superhero movies just because Marvel/Disney owns a lot of superhero rights. You are just not allowed to make an exact copy of their movie but you are allowed to make similar movies all day long.

                  Another example is a professional photographer. Do you really think that they should be awarded no rights whatsoever to the photograph they took?

                  The same obviously applies to huge companies as well. Why make a movie if it’s available for free download literally everywhere.

                  How do you propose that the makers of content, inventions and products get paid? Donations? Get real, that won’t happen.

        • @barsoap@lemm.ee
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          49 hours ago

          Or trade secrets. “Perfect information” is a bitch. Not to speak of “perfectly rational actors”: Say goodbye to advertisement, too, we’d have to outlaw basically all of it.

          • @frezik@midwest.social
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            5 hours ago

            Trade secrets don’t need to be enforced much by law. You can create an ad hoc trade secret regime by simply keeping your secret between a few key employees. As it happens, there are some laws that go beyond that to help companies keep the secret, but that only extends something that could happen naturally.

            • @barsoap@lemm.ee
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              12 hours ago

              To get closer to the free market there would have to be a duty to disclose any- and everything that’s now a trade secret, no matter how easily kept. To not just get closer but actually get there we all would need to be telepathic. As said, perfect information is a bitch of a concept.

              • @lud@lemm.ee
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                32 hours ago

                Being free to innovate and keep your own ideas to yourself sounds like it should be part of the free market though.

                Forcing people to disclose their (mental) secrets seems bizarre.

                • @barsoap@lemm.ee
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                  12 hours ago

                  I’m not arguing for any policies, just explaining what would be necessary to make the theoretical model of the free market a reality in actual reality: It assumes perfect information and perfectly rational actors, it’s a tall order.

          • Avid Amoeba
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            18 hours ago

            Are you telling me that the axioms behind the simplistic model are wrong?? shocked-pikachu.jpg

            • @barsoap@lemm.ee
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              37 hours ago

              It’s not so much that they’re wrong is that they’re impossible in practice. Axioms, by their very nature, cannot be justified from within the system that they serve so “true” or “false” aren’t really applicable.

              The model does have its justification, “given these axioms, we indeed get perfect allocation of resources”, that’s not wrong it’s a mathematical truth, and there’s a strain of liberalism (ordoliberalism) which specifically says “the state should regulate so that the actually existing market more closely approximates this mythical free market unicorn”, which is broadly speaking an immensely sensible take and you’ll have market socialists nodding in agreement, yep, that’s a good idea.

              And then there’s another strain (neoliberalism) which basically says “lul we’ll tell people that ‘free market’ means ‘unregulated market’ so we can be feudal lords and siphon off infinite amounts of resources from the plebs”.

              • Avid Amoeba
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                5 hours ago

                Wrong as in not sound. An argument can be valid assuming its assumptions are true. The argument is the model, which really is a set of arguments. Its assumptions which are taken axiomatically are as you say impossible, therefore they are not true (which I called wrong). So the argument is not sound. I’m not saying anything different than what you said really, just used informal language. ☺️

                • @barsoap@lemm.ee
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                  2 hours ago

                  Its assumptions are inconsistent with the conditions in the material world, but that doesn’t make the model itself unsound. A model is not an argument, definitely not in the political sense, it’s just a model.

                  You can also include the model in the material world, as was done, at the very least, when the paper introducing it was published and that doesn’t make the material world unsound, either: The model lives in organic computation machines which implement paraconsistent logic in a way that does not, contrary to an assumption popular among those computation machines, make those paradoxes real in the material realm they’re embedded in.

                  Everything is, ultimately, sound, because the universe, nay, cause and effect itself, does not just shatter willy-nilly. “ex falso quodlibet” would have rather interesting implications, physics-wise. For one, an infinite amount of Boltzmann brains would haunt an infinite amount of physicists.

  • @frezik@midwest.social
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    399 hours ago

    We shall break into the desktop and laptop market! Let’s start by severing ties with one of the most successful companies to do that so far.

    • @jiberish@lemmy.world
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      246 hours ago

      I think you’re in the wrong classroom. Government abortion-clinic cellphone tracking software is next door.

  • @umbrella@lemmy.ml
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    12 hours ago

    thanks, proprietary licenses.

    can we finally move to open standards now or will these fucks keep on losing money just to spite foss? are they that afraid we read some of their source code?

    • Bilb!
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      24 hours ago

      I’m hoping for a nice warm x86_64 phone.

  • poVoq
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    2812 hours ago

    I wonder if their recent bid to take over Intel, is related.

    The irony would be very thik as Qualcomm played a big role in killing Intel’s 2010er efforts to enter the mobile sector.

    • @TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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      2812 hours ago

      Qualcomm is not trying to take over Intel.

      Not only has it been denied by both parties, it would 100% not go ahead. Additionally, it would invalidate the x86 cross-licence that AMD and Intel have, meaning Intel would no longer be able to make modern x86 CPUs. Frankly it’s also somewhat doubtful Qualcomm wants to take Intel on.

      The rumour was likely someone trying to pump up the stock and sell.

      • Toes♀
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        9 hours ago

        I’m just being a little pedantic. But I believe you meant x64?

        Edit: x86_64 thanks guys

        • @woelkchen@lemmy.world
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          810 hours ago

          X64 doesn’t exist. Microsoft used the label for Windows for a while to distinguish from IA64 (Itanium) and 32bit x86 editions of Windows but these days Microsoft moved mostly away from those labels and only uses them when talking about ARM.

          • @frezik@midwest.social
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            89 hours ago

            The x86 license itself doesn’t matter much anymore. Those patents expired a long time ago. Early x86_64 is held by AMD, but those patents are also expiring soon.

            There’s more advancements past that which are held by both Intel and AMD. You still can’t make a modern x86 CPU on your own. Soon, you’ll be able to make a CPU with an instruction set compatible with the first Athlon 64-bit processors, but that’s as far as it goes.

  • @CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.ml
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    17 hours ago

    Hopefully Qualcomm takes the hint and takes this opportunity to develop a high performance RISC V core. Don’t just give the extortionists more money, break free and use an open standard. Instruction sets shouldn’t even require licensing to begin with if APIs aren’t copyrightable. Why is it OK to make your own implentation of any software API (see Oracle vs. Google on the Java API, Wine implementing the Windows API, etc) but not OK to do the same thing with an instruction set (which is just a hardware API). Why is writing an ARM or x86 emulator fine but not making your own chip? Why are FPGA emulator systems legal if instruction sets are protected? It makes no sense.

    The other acceptable outcome here is a Qualcomm vs. ARM lawsuit that sets a precedence that instruction sets are not protected. If they want to copyright their own cores and sell the core design fine, but Qualcomm is making their own in house designs here.

    • @scarilog@lemmy.world
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      4413 hours ago

      takes this opportunity to develop a high performance RISC V core

      They might. This would never be open sourced though. Best case scenario is the boost they would provide to the ISA as a whole by having a company as big as Qualcomm backing it.

      • @CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.ml
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        3810 hours ago

        RISC V is just an open standard set of instructions and their encodings. It is not expected nor required for implementations of RISC V to be open sourced, but if they do make a RISC V chip they don’t have to pay anyone to have that privilege and the chip will be compatible with other RISC V chips because it is an open and standardized instruction set. That’s the point. Qualcomm pays ARM to make their own chip designs that implement the ARM instruction set, they aren’t paying for off the shelf ARM designs like most ARM chip companies do.

      • Captain Aggravated
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        1710 hours ago

        The RISCV instruction set IS open source. What they’d do to ratfuck it is lock the bootloader or something.

    • @rhombus@sh.itjust.works
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      69 hours ago

      Saying an ISA is just a hardware API vastly oversimplifies what an architecture is. There is way more to it than just the instruction set, because you can’t have an instruction set without also defining the numbers and types of registers, the mapping of memory and how the CPU interacts with it, the input/output model for the system, and a bunch of other features like virtual memory, addressing modes etc. Just to give an idea, the ARM reference is 850 pages long.

      • @CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.ml
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        37 hours ago

        APIs can be complex too. Look at how much stuff the Win32 API provides from all the kernel calls, defined data structures/types, libraries, etc. I would venture a guess that if you documented the Win32 API including all the needed system libraries to make something like Wine, it would also be 850 pages long. The fact remains that a documented prototype for a software implementation is free to reimplement but a documented prototype for a hardware implementation requires a license. This makes no sense from a fairness perspective. I’m fine with ARM not giving away their fully developed IP cores which are actual implementations of the ARM instruction set, but locking third parties from making their own compatible designs without a license is horribly anticompetitive. I wish standards organizations still had power. Letting corporations own de-facto “standards” is awful for everyone.

      • @CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.ml
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        1410 hours ago

        In the mobile Linux scene, Qualcomm chips are some of the best supported ones. I don’t love everything Qualcomm does, but the Snapdragon 845 makes for a great Linux phone and has open source drivers for most of the stack (little thanks to Qualcomm themselves).

        • @thesporkeffect@lemmy.world
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          89 hours ago

          Qualcomm is one of the worst monopolists in any industry though. They are widely known to have a stranglehold on all mobile device development

    • @NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      Don’t just give the extortionists more money

      Or maybe they were just trying to pay a lot less money, and then they got caught at their little trick.