Re: [boost] Boost and patents

From: Alexander Terekhov (terekhov_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-09-22 04:08:22

loufoque wrote:
> 
> Mateusz Loskot wrote :
> 
> > Today, my friend was told (warned) on the #c++ IRC channel that
> > Boost uses some technologies already patented by IBM (and may be other
> > entities), like RCU or SMR (and may be more).
> 
> I think I saw part of that discussion.
> It actually started about the cost of reference counting in
> multithreading environments.
> Then it was said that using technologies such as RCU and SMR could
> improve performance, but given that those are patented [1], they
> couldn't be used in boost::shared_ptr.

RCU is a read-write scheme to abuse scheduler. It has nothing to do
with boost::shared_ptr.

SMR is "poor man" garbage collector (very expensive) for ala-Java 
ref^^^pointers providing strong thread-safety. It has also nothing 
to with boost::shared_ptr because it provide basic thread-safety, 
not strong.

regards,
alexander.