[Openec] Patented NiMH charging algorithm

[Richard A. Smith]

I have a bump in the road toward a fully open EC codebase.

I've learned this week that GoldPeak intends to apply for a patent on 
their long life NiMH battery charge algorithm.

OLPC gets a royalty free license to use this technology but we are not 
going to be allowed to release the detailed charging info on the NiMH 
algorithm.

If they are granted the patent then even if one of you smart gents were 
to reverse engineer the code we still can't use it.

Bummer...

Thoughts?

-- 
Richard Smith  <richard at laptop.org>
One Laptop Per Child