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Technology Stocks : 3DFX -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Farrell who wrote (13211)	6/11/1999 5:18:00 PM
From: jwag	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 16960

3dfx is getting bashed by Nerds. In the discussion of the 3dfx/Creative suit on slashdot.org (News for Nerds) the consensus is against 3dfx. This site is a big proponent of "Open Source", so it is not surprising that a proprietary interface is unpopular. However, the number of anti-3dfx comments by these guys is of concern to me. slashdot.org jwag

To: John Farrell who wrote (13211)	6/11/1999 5:26:00 PM
From: benwood	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16960

If in fact Creative infringed, it just means that in their judgement they believe can get away with it. That's what Kodak thought when they created their instant camera business, which cost them millions when they lost flat-out in patent court to Polaroid Land and had to buy back all the cameras from customers at $50 a pop and dump them in a landfill. I viewed that as a case where Kodak felt it was king and could just walk all over Polaroid Land; but lo and behold, the patent courts didn't give a rip who Kodak thought they were, they upheld the patents anyway. Kind of like when that umpire called out McGuire on strikes when he was sitting on 60 homers last year. But McGuire was a big boy and just walked away. Lets hope that TDFX gets the same copyright and patent protection offered every other innovator in the US.

To: John Farrell who wrote (13211)	6/11/1999 7:23:00 PM
From: SBHX	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16960

Hate to say this, but an API is a definition of an interface between s/w (the game) and hardware (the card). I keep scratching my head, but I can't for the life of me understand how an API can be construed as IP. The definition of Glide actually has more in common with the Hayes AT command set than it does with say, a method or apparatus that introduces new stuff. Having to port games into multiple versions of APIs is a big pain for games. Right now, OpenGL and D3D is winning that war (go to the computer store and count how many games). If 3Dfx is serious about trying to make Glide a success, releasing it as a 3rd standard could allow it to be adopted widely. If there's one thing that the journey through the PC world has taught us, the beacons of success are all open standards, while the closed systems (MCA, PS/2, Visual J++) eventually flounder and litter the roadside. Intellectual property is certainly a nebulous area of law.