• TheTechnician27
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    5 months ago

    With the understanding that both of these are publicly traded multi-billion-dollar corporations and therefore neither should be trusted (albeit Arm Holdings has about 1/10 of the net assets), I feel like I distrust Arm less on this one than whatever Qualcomm is doing on their coke-fueled race to capitalize on the AI bubble.

    • MudMan
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      195 months ago

      What does trust have to do with anything? I mean, they seem to be arguing because Qualcomm bought a separate licensor and ARM argues that requires a contract renegotiation. This is the least take sides-y legal dispute in the history of legal disputes.

      • TheTechnician27
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        5 months ago

        What does trust have to do with anything?

        The fact that I’m not a legal expert who’s read the relevant portion of the existing contract? Like what Arm says seems reasonable, but at the end of the day, I have nothing definitive to go on.

        • MudMan
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          85 months ago

          Oh, no, I agree, what I’m saying is you don’t need to trust anybody here. Not everything is a sport, you can see this happen and not root for anybody. It’s a complex legal problem that likely flies over everybody’s heads without reading all the relevant communications. It’s not a take sides, trust-based thing.

  • @umbrella@lemmy.ml
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    5 months 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?

  • irotsoma
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    735 months 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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      125 months 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
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        155 months 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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      375 months ago

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

    • @jiberish@lemmy.world
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      245 months ago

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

      • @Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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        115 months 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.

        • @SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org
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          35 months ago

          Good. Godot exists. Or even that weird engine from Amazon (?) they open sourced. You could make a Unity competitor out of that. Just create an asset store for it and sell stuff, give other creators a decent cut and they will come.

  • poVoq
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    275 months 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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      305 months 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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        5 months ago

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

        Edit: x86_64 thanks guys

          • @frezik@midwest.social
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            85 months 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.

        • @woelkchen@lemmy.world
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          85 months 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.

    • @CaptDust@sh.itjust.works
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      215 months ago

      Nailed it. They know they have a leading chip in these designs now, the market is expanding, and whatever licensing fee was negotiated in the past needs to be revisited.

    • Buelldozer
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      65 months ago

      ARM is mad because Qualcomm bought Nuvia (which had their own ARM license) and then started using Nuvia’s designs. ARM says that Qualcomm needs to renegotiate the license in order to use those designs.

      Normally ARM and Qualcomm would handle this fairly smoothly, the reason its not happening this time is because ARM and Qualcomm both have growth plans that are increasingly making them direct competitors.

  • @humanspiral@lemmy.ca
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    345 months 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.

    • @ozymandias117@lemmy.world
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      125 months ago

      Yeah. The crowd rooting for Qualcomm has never worked with them

      ARM has it’s problems, but they aren’t in the wrong here

    • @Doomsider@lemmy.world
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      15 months ago

      Oh so they aren’t as shitty as other companies so it is all good? Sounds like horseshit to me. Patents on a quickly changing area like computer technology are pretty asinine hence why people don’t like them.

      Also there is nothing preventing them from changing their behavior and turning into patent trolls in the future. In fact, enshitification pretty much guarantees they will at some point in the future.

    • @Laser@feddit.org
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      85 months ago

      Qualcomm paying as much as other licensees should be preferable to Qualcomm than bankruptcy.

      Not saying this is wrong, but where do you get it from? The article just states that ARM considers Qualcomm’s acquisition of Nuvia a breach of license. Both companies held ARM licenses before. What’s the issue with such a purchase?

  • @frezik@midwest.social
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    415 months 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.