
Oculus Rift Development Kit 1 - wildpeaks
https://github.com/OculusVR/RiftDK1
======
readerrrr
PATENTS

 _Additional Grant of Patent Rights

“Software” means the Rift DK1 Firmware distributed by Oculus VR, Inc. Oculus
hereby grants you a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive,
irrevocable (subject to the termination provision below) license under any
rights in any patent claims owned by Oculus, to make, have made, use, sell,
offer to sell, import, and otherwise transfer the Software. For avoidance of
doubt, no license is granted under Oculus’s rights in any patent claims that
are infringed by (i) modifications to the Software made by you or a third
party, or (ii) the Software in combination with any software or other
technology provided by you or a third party.

The license granted hereunder will terminate, automatically and without
notice, for anyone that makes any claim (including by filing any lawsuit,
assertion or other action) alleging (a) direct, indirect, or contributory
infringement or inducement to infringe any patent: (i) by Oculus or any of its
subsidiaries or affiliates, whether or not such claim is related to the
Software, (ii) by any party if such claim arises in whole or in part from any
software, product or service of Oculus or any of its subsidiaries or
affiliates, whether or not such claim is related to the Software, or (iii) by
any party relating to the Software; or (b) that any right in any patent claim
of Oculus is invalid or unenforceable._

~~~
objclxt
This seems - and I'm not a lawyer and could be totally misreading it - to be a
really raw deal, in the sense that in exchange for using the software you're
agreeing to not just sue, but even assert in any way that Facebook infringes
upon _any_ patent of yours (or anyone else's, for that matter).

Does "any patent" include design patents? Because that seems like a really
terrible thing to agree to. Say I'm a company looking to use this library: do
I really want to be bound by a license which will be revoked if I ever sue, or
even claim publicly that any division of Facebook - because that's what I take
"affiliate" to mean - has infringed upon any patent, be it hardware, software,
design...

Or am I just misreading this?

~~~
bdonlan
IANAL either, but as I read it, if you sue facebook the patent license just
goes away. It's essentially the same at that point as if they hadn't mentioned
anything at all. So you're either getting something (a conditional license for
the patents) at no direct cost to you, or you're getting nothing and losing
nothing - how is that a raw deal?

These patent grants are commonly used by companies who gather patent
portfolios as a means of patent mutually assured destruction. The goal is to
ensure that they will never be sued for patent infringement by making sure
they have a broad enough patent portfolio to always be able to countersue.

Now, if you want to use this and retain the ability to safely sue facebook,
you could always negotiate a separate, irrevocable patent license. This is
what you would need to do (that, or ignore any potential patents and hope
you're not sued) in the absence of such a grant in the first place.

~~~
themgt
Well according to the language, if you simply wrote a tweet saying that
"Facebook patent US7827208, 'generating a feed of stories personalized for
members of a social network' is riduculous and overbroad" you could then have
your right to develop for Oculus effectively revoked

[http://www.google.com/patents/US7827208](http://www.google.com/patents/US7827208)

~~~
JackC
I see how you're getting that, but I don't think the license is intended that
way or would be enforced that way. When they say "makes a claim," they mean
"makes a claim to an entity with the power to grant the claim and invalidate
the patent," not "makes a claim on Twitter."

As context, patent litigation comes up in one of two ways: either a patent
holder alleges that their patent is being violated, or a non-patent-holder
alleges that a patent is invalid. The (a) and (b) in this license seem to be
meant to cover those two situations.

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yarrel
Kudos to Oculus for this.

The firmware is 2-clause BSD with an additional patent grant.

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clebio
What are Altium and Gerbers?
[https://github.com/OculusVR/RiftDK1/tree/master/Schematics](https://github.com/OculusVR/RiftDK1/tree/master/Schematics)

~~~
mhb
Altium: Schematic and printed circuit board design files for Altium brand
software.

Gerber: Standard format output files understood by printed circuit board
manufacturing companies. These are output by Altium and every other printed
circuit board design program. Can also be viewed in a Gerber file viewer.

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immy
Check out the committer, nrpatel (eclecti.cc). Awesome projects.

It's been a while since being impressed by CompE folks like this in college
(I'm a software guy).

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wildpeaks
Just released a few minutes ago at Oculus Connect :)

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supahfly_remix
I'm surprised at how there are only 3 major components in the schematic: a
STM-32 microcontroller, an accelerometer/gyroscope, and a magnetometer. Of
course, it gets the job done as simply as possible so nothing more is needed.
Does anyone know if a user needs to go through a calibration step (say be
moving in a circle) before using it?

~~~
fpgaminer
Yup, the Oculus Config Util, which owners of DK1 can download, includes a
calibration function. You hold the Oculus DK1 in place and rotate it around in
every which way until the software is happy.

~~~
supahfly_remix
good to know -- thanks!

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TD-Linux
Now only if they could release their libOVR library for talking to the Oculus
under a free software compatible license.

~~~
1qaz2wsx3edc
I imagine they will so they can dominate the industry as a "standard"
leveraging themselves above/against competitors. It would ensure they stay the
lead in the emerging VR-industry.

~~~
higherpurpose
Thanks for reminding me just _how much_ I hate Facebook buying Oculus Rift.
The last thing we need is for Facebook to become unremovable from yet another
industry.

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SilentDirge
Great to see the acquisition hasn't changed the founders promise to be
opensource. Bravo!

Looking at the files it's a pretty well designed piece of hardware but nothing
too technical. The magic (as usual) is in the software.

The design is pretty good too. They even included the carrying case, though,
it's missing a clip, ha.

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ChaoticGood
Check out
[https://github.com/highfidelity/hifi](https://github.com/highfidelity/hifi)
These ideas go together.

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intruder
Don't forget: Carmack and Abrash are going to give talks today!

[http://www.twitch.tv/oculus](http://www.twitch.tv/oculus)

