On Sun, 2003-11-09 at 01:25, Don Armstrong wrote: > > 5. Reciprocity. If You institute patent litigation against a > > Contributor with respect to a patent applicable to software > > (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit), then > > any patent licenses granted by that Contributor to You under > > this License shall terminate as of the date such litigation is > > filed. In addition, if You institute patent litigation against > > any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a > > lawsuit) alleging that the Work itself (excluding combinations > > of the Work with other software or hardware) infringes Your > > patent(s), then any patent licenses granted to You under this > > License for that Work shall terminate as of the date such > > litigation is filed. > > This is not DFSG free. While software patents are generally held to be > bad, it is not the purpose of a Free Software license to discriminate > against who can use the software. [This also has the wierd side effect > of effectively granting to each Contributor a license to use without > royalty any of the Licensee's patents applicable to software, no > matter how legitimate those patents are.] > > We should be dealing with invalid and/or improper software patents > through legislation and/or litigation rather than adding usage > restrictions to our formerly free software licenses.
I'm unable to get into a long term discussion about this right now. Just be on notice that this kind of opinion is senseless and utterly counterproductive to free software development. So you want companies to grant perpetual, non-exclusive, worldwide, fully paid-up and royalty free patent licenses that are completely irrevocable even when another company is using their software and suing them for software patent infringement? Get a clue people. If a patent licence does not terminate under such circumstances then a free software friendly company may have no useful negotiating position whatsoever. It can't counterclaim with its own claims of patent infringement because it gave them up. The company needs to be able to say "Yes, I may be infringing upon your software patent X but if you initiate legal action against me you may be infringing upon software patent Y. Care to negotiate?" If it can't do that it is a sitting duck for any opportunistic litigant. While reciprocity cannot stem the rise of companies that are just patent licensing/litigation shells (that are unlikely to infringe upon patents because they don't produce anything) it may still just provide a slight disincentive for them to target free software if their business runs upon quality software products like Apache. No sane company will ever grant a perpetual, non-exclusive, worldwide, fully paid-up and royalty free patent licence without a reciprocity clause. Debian should not be indirectly legitimising the business endeavour of engaging in litigation against free software developers and destroying free software itself via licensing royalties. Debian should not be attempting to kneecap the potential negotiating positions and counterclaims of free software friendly companies in order for their software to be included in Debian. Regards, Adam