2007/10/9, MJ Ray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > If they can be made public safely, I think they would be in the removal > request bug. The biggest problem is if a patent-aggressor requires > silence as part of the settlement, saying they'll sue for past crimes > if it's made public.
In my opinion this is just too absurd to believe, this can't possible be legally enforcible. Sounds somehow like censorship to me. > That is unfortunate. Have you tried looking into the famous software > patents at http://swpat.ffii.org/ for example or are you looking for > debian package examples in particular? I am really looking for very detailed and verifiable example cases, that affected individual packages in the debian repositories. This could look like the following purely fictious example: "On 20.02.2002 Company XYZ contacted Person ABC, with the request to remove packet DEFG, because the software is believed to be affected by US-Patent-Nr. 0000XXX-00, which is in the posession of our company. This Patent is valid under the Jurisdiction of the US, Canada and Europe." Or an example where someone outside how distributed a certain software and was sued, which motivated the debian people to remove that package. This of course would need to be backed by patent-numbers and information about the legal judgements as well. Questions: * WHAT Debian package is affected * WHAT are the patents that apply * WHO is enforcing it, and do they target "non-commercial" efforts as well? * WHO has been sued yet, and for WHAT exactly > I think maintainers and ftp-masters are responsible for decisions to > remove; and I think verification is already part of the process, but > note that a package simply becoming no fun to maintain because of patent > threats can result in a reason for removal (no maintainer), too. This is just my opinion, and a respect that people might disagree, but I don't really like to bow down before threats unless there is concrete and publicly verifiable and provable information that I am doing wrongly. I am an enthusiastic Free and Open-Source Software Person, and I prefer to stand up for what I believe, and I still think there is a lot of FUD in the perception of patents in FLOSS. I think in the long term it would be very good to stick to facts like events, numbers, dates and so on. Fight the FUD with Facts. Cheers -Richard -- Are you teaching the What and the How but without the Why and the When? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
