> But I think that’s too long. The patent has already served its purpose well, and I believe that holding on to it any longer benefits nobody.
Damn dude didn't you pay like ... over $10k for that patent?
A Decade of Slug
21–30 of 88 posts
Re: A Decade of Slug
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I was granted a patent for the Slug algorithm in 2019, and I legally have exclusive rights to it until the year 2038. But I think that’s too long. The patent has already served its purpose well, and I believe that holding on to it any longer benefits nobody. Therefore, effective today, I am permanently and irrevocably dedicating the Slug patent to the public domain.
Yes, now that SDF font rendering is the industry's preference, he drops the software patent. That is, he is dropping the patent because it isn't a commercially viable piece of software, not because he is ethically opposed to it. Great virtue signaling though.
SDF font rendering has been around 20+ years though? Valve really popularized in their 2007 SIGGRAPH paper and Chlumský developed MSDF font rendering in a 2015 thesis.
Re: A Decade of Slug
#23> But I think that’s too long. The patent has already served its purpose well, and I believe that holding on to it any longer benefits nobody. Damn dude didn't you pay like ... over $10k for that patent?
I took care of the whole thing myself without lawyers, so I ended up paying something like $950 in various filing fees.
Re: A Decade of Slug
#24I used Slug at a previous job. It is an excellent, artfully crafted library; really the pinnacle of software engineering in my opinion. Thanks to the author for donating the algorithm to the public domain!
Re: A Decade of Slug
#25> But I think that’s too long. The patent has already served its purpose well, and I believe that holding on to it any longer benefits nobody. Damn dude didn't you pay like ... over $10k for that patent?
I took care of the whole thing myself without lawyers, so I ended up paying something like $950 in various filing fees.
How did you get that diploma/plaque, is that something every patent author will have?
Re: A Decade of Slug
#26Finally, some good video game development news!
Re: A Decade of Slug
#27This is wonderful news, and my sincere thanks to the author. I remember coming upon this algorithm several years ago, and thinking it was extremely elegant and very appealing, but being disappointed by the patent status making it unusable for FOSS work. I really appreciate the author's choice to dedicate it to the public domain after a reasonable amount of time, and congratulations on the success it had while proprie…
Software patents valid for 8 years is actually something I could get behind.
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Re: A Decade of Slug
#28His latest project is https://radicalpie.com/ A Professional Equation Editor for Windows 10/11 for 60$ that uses Slug for rendering. Presumably he‘s using it to write his great FGED books.
25 years ago I would have loved that. But I don't actually know many people still doing any of this sort of work on Windows.
(I get it. It's an awesome replacement for MathType. It uses OLE so that it embeds in Microsoft Word nicely. Still...)
Re: A Decade of Slug
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I was granted a patent for the Slug algorithm in 2019, and I legally have exclusive rights to it until the year 2038. But I think that’s too long. The patent has already served its purpose well, and I believe that holding on to it any longer benefits nobody. Therefore, effective today, I am permanently and irrevocably dedicating the Slug patent to the public domain.
Yes, now that SDF font rendering is the industry's preference, he drops the software patent. That is, he is dropping the patent because it isn't a commercially viable piece of software, not because he is ethically opposed to it. Great virtue signaling though.
SDF font rendering was an industry standard maybe from 2007-2010. and you probably won’t believe what happened to OpenGL since then. Don’t even look into at what people are doing with GPUs these days, you won’t like it one bit!
Re: A Decade of Slug
#30Awesome algorithm and thank you for donating it to open source!