A private mail drew to my attention the following sentence in Section 7 of the GPLv2:
For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by *all* those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program. (Emphasis added.) Now this "all" seems extremely unfortunate to me. Suppose I file for a patent P, the practice of which is required to run program R released under the GPL. Normally, distribution of R would be impossible. But suppose I issue the following public license: "Everyone is allowed to practice patent P royalty-free (etc. etc.) except for the notorious Richard Stallman." Is distribution of R still impossible because Stallman can't use it? Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me, without doubt; but is the presence of a single legal disability in a whole nation (and it doesn't have to be patent-based; any kind of disability will do) grounds to withhold free software from the rest? -- John Cowan [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.reutershealth.com www.ccil.org/~cowan If a soldier is asked why he kills people who have done him no harm, or a terrorist why he kills innocent people with his bombs, they can always reply that war has been declared, and there are no innocent people in an enemy country in wartime. The answer is psychotic, but it is the answer that humanity has given to every act of aggression in history. --Northrop Frye -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3