Re: [boost] Boost and patents

From: Mateusz Loskot (mateusz_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-09-22 07:12:04

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.
> 
> I do not know how this discussion transformed into patents being used
> in boost though.

loufoque,

Thank you very much for this summary.
I think it's a kind of grapevine, transmitted by me too :-)
at least to this list.

> Since I don't really know myself how RCU and SMR work, I am unable to
>  give more info but if you're interested you could search for "RCU
> SMR" in Google groups which seems to bring interesting results in 
> comp.programming.threads and comp.lang.c++.moderated about this kind
> of stuff.

Yup, I've searched these archives.
As some of participants in this thread confirmed, RCU and SMR is not
used in Boost, so I'm quite sure that it was a rumour about RCU/SMR
issues ;-)

Although, what Maciej and others suggested, it doesn't mean Boost is
completely free of patented technologies :-(

Cheers
-- 
Mateusz Loskot
http://mateusz.loskot.net