Simon Josefsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi! I'm writing guidelines for IETF document authors on how to achieve > free software compatible copyright and patent licenses [1]. [...] > [1] http://josefsson.org/bcp78broken/draft-josefsson-free-standards-howto.html > Does anyone have some references to any patent license that have been > deemed acceptable to some free software projects? > > Going further, is there some kind of patent license that free software > would _prefer_ (as opposed to just _accept_)?
Thank you for writing guidelines. I cannot answer the above two questions. I am mostly ignorant of software patent licensing because I believe pure software is a sequence of mathematical expressions which cannot be invented, only discovered. > To give a concrete example of what I'm thinking of: > > There is one patent license in <https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/942/>: > > Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, Google hereby > grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, > royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this License) patent > license for patents necessarily infringed by implementation (in whole > or in part) of this specification. If You institute patent litigation > against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a > lawsuit) alleging that the implementation of the specification > constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any > patent licenses for the specification granted to You under this > License shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed. > > This patent license is a reciprocal license, but is fairly limited in > scope. > > Would that be acceptable to free software projects? No, I think - to call it free software, I would want to be able to use the patent-covered software "for any purpose" and not just "implementation of this specification" like in the above. Compare with http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-sw.html Hope that explains, -- MJ Ray (slef) Webmaster for hire, statistician and online shop builder for a small worker cooperative http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ (Notice http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html) tel:+44-844-4437-237 _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list [email protected] https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
