• Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    I remember back when they first started getting popular I was at a conference and told a marketing person that we should make one instead of giving folks a long url. The marketing person said “I don’t know if we have the budget to register one.”

    I used to think that this was because the marketing person didn’t know how they worked, but now I know that they thought it worked like UPCs.

    Shout out to Masahiro Hara for not asserting his patent rights so this incredibly useful tool could be free.

    • catloaf@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      If he didn’t, one of the several other 2D barcodes would have caught on. I see non-QR ones around pretty often, though usually in industrial applications.

      I remember back around 2009, there were a few of these in the newspaper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Capacity_Color_Barcode

      I don’t know how well it worked given the loose color registration. I didn’t have anything that could read them at the time.