"Giovanni Piero Deretta" <gpderetta@gmail.com> wrote in message news:1439aad50610240210n2c9d89cdie5e462fc5f26075e@mail.gmail.com...
Ok, now the tricky question,
Judiging from the comments on comp.programming.threads, looks like almost everything that falls under lock free is patented.
Not everything... yet... ;^)
Is the refcount code definitely patent encumbered or there is a reasonable chance that it could be used without falling in the patent swamp?
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c++.moderated/msg/744d1fcf97fa9dd9 So far so good. I have recently snooped around some patents and patent applications and have not found anything that claims my prior art wrt the my refcount algorithm; looks like this is going to work out just fine for Boost.
What about the rest of appcore (I would love to use a lockfree thread queue)?
Well, the current version of AppCore includes a full-blown SMR implementation; IBM has a patent application out on it. http://groups.google.com/group/comp.programming.threads/browse_frm/thread/dc... So, I need to strip it completely out of my library, then alls that's left are my inventions, this of course includes the queue...
And then, what about the license? I suppose you have the intention of releasing at least the refcount code under the boost license,
Yup.
what about the rest of appcore?
Humm... Not "exactly" sure yet... A commercial library of mine, called vZOOM, makes use of a couple of my algorithms in AppCore. I currently have a patent application out on vZOOM and it's private at this point. I only released a particular version of it to Sun for their CoolThreads contest; it's one of the four finalists: https://coolthreads.dev.java.net/ So, that could be a little tricky... I really need to make up my mind here... I will have an answer for you fairly shortly... Okay? ;^)
other than that, great job,
Thank You! :^)
I'm definitely not an expert in lock free programming and wouldn't touch the implementation not even with a 100 meters staff, but I would definitely be an user .
That's fine. As a user, you should be able to experience the enhanced scalability, throughput and performance benefits' that some cleverly thought-out lock-free algorithms provide... Indeed!